Friday, July 16, 2021

Alternate Oscars: 1981 (Re-Do)

Okay, let's skip ahead six years to 1981. The polls from the intervening years probably aren't perfect, but they're good enough — or at least nobody complained about them at the time which is pretty much the same thing as far as I'm concerned.

In retrospect, I can see I was doing then out of necessity what I am doing now by design — relying on a consensus of other people's opinions to arrive at my list of alternate Oscar nominees. The truth is, while a post appeared every Sunday morning in 2019 like clockwork, I went weeks at a time without writing a word. I was, instead, heading to the hospital every morning before dawn, gobbling Compazine and Zofran like tic-tac's, and otherwise napping all day just so I could brush my teeth and go to bed at 7. That's something they never tell you about cancer: it's exhausting.

But I digress.
Anyway, in my heated rush to knock out ten or twelve weeks worth of blog entries during a lull in treatments, I was forced, like Blanche DuBois, to rely on the kindness of strangers. And overall, I like the results.

The danger, though, of a purely consensus methodology is you can fall into the same simple-minded habits the Academy does and wind up with the same nominees, year-in and year-out, whether they've really done anything special or not. Meryl Streep has, like, eleventy-thrillion Oscar nominations — she could puke up a roll of film after a night of heavy drinking and the Academy would give her an award for it — while some of Hollywood's greatest actresses never got nominated at all (paging Myrna Loy). So I have to be on guard for that, separating out the good stuff from the "dingoes ate mah baby!" kind of autopilot noms.
There's not much point in doing this if you don't occasionally think outside the box ...

That said, 1981 actually went pretty well as far as the voting goes, but 1981 was also the first time I paid attention to the Oscars and I wanted to tweak it a bit.



My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

4 comments:

mister muleboy said...

I just came across "The Movie Love Questionnaire" on the Ebert movie site. Apparently, most of their reviewers have answered, and you can get a better sense of who the reviewers are [without knowing a goddamned thing about them, necessarily]. I'd be eager to know thy answers.

The Movie Love Questionnaire
Where did you grow up, and what was it like?
Was anyone else in your family into movies? If so, what effect did they have on your moviegoing tastes?
What's the first movie you remember seeing, and what impression did it make on you?
What's the first movie that made you think, "Hey, some people made this. It didn't just exist. There's a human personality behind it."
What's the first movie you ever walked out of?
What's the funniest film you've ever seen?
What's the saddest film you've ever seen?
What's the scariest film you've ever seen?
What's the most romantic film you've ever seen?
What's the first television show you ever saw that made you think television could be more than entertainment?
What book do you think about or revisit the most?
What album or recording artist have you listened to the most, and why?
Is there a movie that you think is great, or powerful, or perfect, but that you never especially want to see again, and why?
What movie have you seen more times than any other?
What was your first R-rated movie, and did you like it?
What's the most visually beautiful film you've ever seen?
Who are your favorite leading men, past and present?
Who are your favorite leading ladies, past and present?
Who's your favorite modern filmmaker?
Who's your least favorite modern filmmaker?
What film do you love that most people seem to hate?
What film do you hate that most people love?
Tell me about a moviegoing experience you will never forget—not just because of the movie, but because of the circumstances in which you saw it.
What aspect of modern theatrical moviegoing do you like least?
What aspect of moviegoing during your childhood do you miss the most?
Have you ever damaged a friendship, or thought twice about a relationship, because you disagreed about whether a movie was good or bad?
What movies have you dreamed about?
What concession stand item can you not live without?

Mythical Monkey said...

Hmm. Sounds like my next blog post!

Btw, I have been cleaning up my old alternate Oscar polls. My drive-by ballot box stuffer showed up this last weekend and took a dump so I finally sprang for a professional poll service that will allow me to delete and block IP addresses that abuse the privilege. It's just two people, one in the U.S., one in Brazil, who can't contain their enthusiasms. So I went through and deleted just their votes and all sort of interesting winners popped out -- Ginger Rogers, Irene Dunne, Tony Curtis, Tom Hanks ...

mister muleboy said...

Fuck that fucking fucker.

Twice !!

Mythical Monkey said...

I was so steamed, you have no idea!